June 23, 2010
RIPPED PYJAMA PANTS AND A CUP OF TEA
What a week; Harry has barely slept a peep, and consequently neither have I.

There is a feeling that comes from having an inconsolable screaming baby in the middle of the night; you begin to feel a little loopy. It feels as though the whole world is sleeping, and that sleep is a sweet drug you cannot afford.

Like a drug addict you begin to think crazy thoughts; your mind wanders to the lengths you'd venture to get your fix.

When you do go to bed you are expecting to be woken at any minute. The concept of falling asleep would be laughable if only you weren't so damn tired.

Your eyelids touch at the same moment baby whimpers creep into your consciousness. Like a beam of sunlight through the bedroom curtain, they mark the end of any dreams you'd hoped to have that night.

An unwashed quilt cover and three week old sheets never felt so soft and inviting against your cheek, Dan's snoring so soothing, nor the bed so warm.

You peel yourself away and prepare for a night of walking the dark cool lounge room floor in your ripped pink star pyjama pants and fluffy bunny slippers.

The next day when you're feeling broken and all used up, your savours appear.

Cake is dished out and tea is poured, a crying Harry is passed into well slept arms whilst yours settle down for a rest.

Once again you are reminded of how wrong you were about mother's groups, and you can't help but wonder how you ever survived before.

Thank you mummies!

June 16, 2010
LET MY SON SHINE THROUGH

My family and some of my closest friends don't know this yet, for that I am sorry.

Only now that I have begun to admit it to myself do I feel strong enough to admit it to others.

That's not to say that I feel strong. No, this is very hard.

I had depression.

What a yucky stigma there is attached to that word. Depression. A stigma that makes you feel a little less than those around you.

Depression is a heavy blanket to burden, and from beneath it the world looks a little hazy. I don't think it is a blanket I could have lifted on my own, and for that I wish to thank Dan with all my heart.

He was the hand that picked up the corner and allowed a little sunlight in. He gave me the taste of life I had forgotten, and the hand I needed to rise from my slump in the corner.

That blanket looks very different from the outside.

I used to think postnatal depression meant you hated your baby, you were suicidal or crazy.

It very rarely means this.

I think we are so quick to make assumptions on that blanket and those beneath it. For me, it was knowing that others made these assumptions that made coming out from under my blanket that much harder.

I felt like I was living someone else's life. I was playing mum and hoping my act was convincing. I could tell no one. When I finally began to admit this to myself I felt lighter.

For every person I told a little weight lifted, and my blanket became easier to bare.

Thank you to everyone who helped a little more light shine in, and for letting me see that in so many cases you were carrying a blanket of your own.

To my beautiful Harry, please know I never stopped loving you. You have and always will be the sunshine that sparkles through my day, I just needed a little help to make a sparkle that would match yours.

And I did.

June 10, 2010
THE FUN POLICE WITH BREASTS
I am the Fun Police and all because I have boobs!

Like many a small chested girl, I relished in the fact that as my belly grew so would my bust, but I gave little thought to the responsibility that would come with my new cleavage.

See it seems that boobs are the only thing that comfort my crying baby. My boobs are the tools used to quieten his cries, be it day or night, in a packed restaurant or a supermarket aisle.

Like a spanner or a hammer my boobs are just tools, and given Dan's lack of mammary glands, the onus on comforting Harry often falls on my sore, forever exposed boobs.

The responsibility however, of NEVER waking Harry, has fallen like a loud chiming church bell in Dan's ears... that I have made sure of.

A flush of the toilet is sometimes all it takes to spin a peacefully sleeping house into a baby screaming fiasco, and send a sleepy mother to the nursery with her tools out and ready to go.

So with this in mind, if in his sleepy stupor Dan accidentally flushes the toilet, I am up like a bolt of lightening, whisper cursing in the poor man's ear. Peeking out at me from behind sleep crusted eyes, and with the fogginess of dreams still floating in his mind, one might forgive his bemused scared expression....not me though.

Nope, I am the Fun Police.

The same reaction, but on a louder scale and with a more clear minded Dan, can be seen during our car trips. A familiar cord is all it takes for Dan to turn the volume nob up and brace his vocals for a tune he loves. I am quick to chastise him for nearly stirring a sleeping Harry.

Yep, I am definitely the Fun Police.

It seems ironic to think that my baby, who's incapable of self soothing – a product of my failed parenting I'm sure – seeks comfort in the exact thing that helped lead to his creation.

Given the responsibility attached to my newly found chest, I am no longer so sure about my desire to have big boobs.

They may have been small before, but at least when I got them out in a car park they weren't greeted with the same nonchalance usually reserved for a carton of milk.

I'm sure as Dan eagerly awaited my growing bust line, he never anticipated the enormous change that would follow.

They may have been small before, but at least I was fun and they didn't leak when he touched them.

Sorry Dan. Sorry.

June 2, 2010
THE WAR ON SLEEP. MUM 0. HARRY 1.

Don't. Move. Too. Quickly. He is sleeping.

As I write this he sleeps in my arms. So the war on sleep continues.

It's funny the reasons we mums create to explain why our babies won't sleep - “Oh he's just over tired, over stimulated, has colic, is teething, he's hungry, he's too full...” – they are all just band aid conditions used to conveniently cover the fact that we have no god damn clue!

But we super mums can't admit to that. Surely not.

Instead we talk about how teething can last for months before there is even any sign of a tooth, we say this can happen anywhere between four and 10 months of age. We like to give ourselves a nice big window.

We talk about colic which is not even understood by doctors, and is best described as a sort of reflux, upset tummy, windy type condition. We like to keep it vague and open to interpretation.

We have created enough band aid conditions so that no mum need ever again admit to having a difficult baby.

Well I am going to rip off the band aids I have been layering over my sleep deprived child in a bid to mask my unattractive parenting failures. If I do it quickly maybe the social judgement might not hurt so much.

My baby hates to sleep.

It is a constant war. If I am to win a battle, it is only because I've spent half an hour pacing the house, bopping him up and down, and humming in his ear.

I guess you could say that I never really win.

Damn those Huggies ads where a mother looks lovingly at a sleeping child whilst wind softly blows her styled hair.

Firstly, new mums don't have styled hair. Secondly, babies don't sleep if there is a soft wind.

I ran into a dad the other day whose two month old breastfed baby already sleeps 10 straight hours a night. In all seriousness I wanted to head butt him.

Are these advertisements and parents just cruel torturous tools sent to rub salt into our poorly covered wounds?

As a friend kindly pointed out, perhaps the mother of that two month old breastfed baby might not have agreed with dad's 10 hours consecutive sleep claim – but that is another issue entirely.

I may be fighting a losing battle, but never has defeat smelt so sweet, and never has snoring in my ear sounded so delightful.

Goodnight for now.

May 27, 2010
A TEETHING BABY, AN ESCAPEE CAT, AND A MISCHIEVOUS DOG

While Dan is away, Harry will play...up!

… and so will the cat and the dog.

This week any nostalgic thought I was clinging to about being the baby of my family has been thrown like a dead weight off the roof. My responsibility as a parent now lies splattered on the front porch, unavoidable to anyone who comes to my house and has to step over the mess as they enter the front door, and my god is there mess...and noise!

Harry is teething, the dog is escaping, and the cat is trying to. I tell myself 'I can do this'.

When did I grow up?

I feel like one minute I am begging to go to Kim Harrison's high school party, the next I am chasing my cat through neighbouring yards at night wearing little more than a nightgown and oversized male slippers.

My cat has just discovered if she twists this way and throws her body that way she can clumsily mush her body through the verandah slats, making me look like a crazy woman as I pace the elderly neighbour's yard at night trying to catch her without setting off the sensor lights and sending the poor woman into cardiac arrest. Why couldn't she have figured this out before Dan went away?

I repeat my affirmation; 'I can do this'.

I try to hang the washing out this morning and the dog escapes. I change out of my nightgown this time, load a screaming grumpy Harry into the car and prepare to go looking for him. As I turn from my unimpressed baby, who should be lying panting at my feet? The dog.

'I can do this'.

Harry has developed a cry that sounds like an old man who has smoked most his life, and he has a face to go with it (a sad face that is, not an old man's face, that would just be weird). He has begun to jut out a trembling bottom lip and let a few tears trickle down his fat baby cheeks. It is his prelude to the agonising baby screams. It gets me every time.

Waking 2 to 3 times a night to his pained cries, and with no-one else here, I can't help but think I. AM. IT. It's a pretty sobering thought.

Then in the middle of all this chaos the cat curls up on my chest and purrs. The dog greets me with a big old sloppy kiss from beside the bed. Harry with his little red face and pouting lip looks up at me, and with baby tears still rolling over his flushed cheeks he pauses for a second, and gives me an ear to ear smile.

I realise then that a second is all it takes. A second is all it takes to know I can do this!

At least for 2 more nights...

May 25, 2010
PREGNANT WOMEN ARE SO NAIVE
I was wrong. There I said it.

I thought I knew it all; how to breastfeed, how to put a baby into a routine, how to be a mum . Then I gave birth.

Turns out most pregnant women are cocky and confident when it comes to the question of how to best raise a child, that is until they become mums.

My advice to pregnant women? Forget antenatal classes and baby books, go to a mum's group.

All the breathing techniques and baby routines in the world will never measure up against the brutally honest tongue of a new mother. If you want the truth about what to expect post pregnancy, a tired, sexually deprived new mum who hasn't had a chance to shave her legs let alone have an uninterrupted shower in weeks will be sure to deliver. She will slap the truth down like a cold fish in a fine restaurant; forget etiquette, if she has something to say she will damn well say it.

I think schools should abolish sexual education and instead make it mandatory for students to attend a mum's group. I guarantee that after hearing about botched caesarian, stretch marks, and baby faeces (in detail) there would be a reduction in the amount of parents who had to hear their daughters mutter the words “Woopsy, I'm pregnant”.

Perhaps if I had not been such a cocky and confident pregnant woman myself, I would not have been so adamant about certain things, like thinking mum's groups were lame.

Once again I was wrong.

I have now had to eat those words. I have had to force their pointy hypocritical corners between my tight lips, down my presumptuous throat and into the guilty depths of my unforgiving stomach. I have had to admit that mum's groups were in fact my savour.

They opened doors for me into a wonderful world full of other irate, over protective mothers who helped to validate my own sense of sanity, however false that may be.

They understand what it's like to have a child that won't stop screaming, to be thrown up on while trying to dine in a cafe like a civilised person, and the humiliation of discovering 20 minutes into a supermarket trip that your top is undone and your breast exposed.

Mum's groups have led me to the conclusion that in the same way pregnant women don't really want to know what lies around that birthing suite corner, nor do new mums really want advice on how to best tackle their parenthood issues. New mums just want to share in the company of other sympathetic mums who struggle at parenthood just as hard as they do.

Preferably, more so.

May 20, 2010
GETTING TO KNOW MY SON WASN'T EASY
When Harry was born he was a stranger to me. Nobody told me that could happen. That this little man who'd gone everywhere with me the past eight months could be so unfamiliar.

When Harry came there was no pushing, instead there was panic.

He was not placed onto my chest, instead his was compressed as they tried to get his little heart beating again.

When his heart did start his cot was not placed beside my bed for me to watch over him, instead he lay alone in a bright sterile room with only midwives to watch on.

We didn't leave the hospital that week with our new son, instead we went home alone.

That night and for many more after, our two kilo Harry lay in a room that did not know night from day, whilst we lay in our bed trying not to think of the empty nursery on the other side of the wall.

When he finally came home it wasn't much easier. I tried to love breastfeeding, but it felt like a job that robbed me of sleep and made my nipples hurt. People would stare at me feeding him, and with soft far away voices and glazed over eyes they would reminisce about their breastfeeding days.

I thought there was something wrong with me. I felt so alone.

It was never about not loving my son; I loved him from the moment I saw those double lines on that supermarket pregnancy test. It was about getting to know him, and getting to know myself as a mum.

Now when I look at Harry, if I am very quite I can almost hear my heart sigh. When he nuzzles in to my neck and I smell the milk that has pooled in his baby rolls, my legs feel as awkward as a child's beneath me. When he turns towards the sound of my voice and smiles because he recognises his mum, my blood runs a little faster through my veins.

I know I have no right to feel disappointed about a birth that gave me a healthy little boy, and a hospital that cared for him in the beginning in a way that I was not equipped to, but I do.

These things are not supposed to be said, which I presume is why no-one ever said them to me.

But I wish they had.